Author: Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

Xamarin debugging Android from Virtual Box

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

Background/Environment

Virtuality

I like to develop inside a Virtual Machine. The advantages of this are:

  • The environment is portable, so I can move it between machines;
  • I can backup and/or snapshot machines so can recover quickly in the event of some failure or error;
  • I can set up different machines for different workflows (e.g. one for API dev, one for Mobile dev etc.)
  • I can replace my physical device without going through the pain of rebuilding my development environment, and;
  • I can use any OS on my physical device

I use VirtualBox to host my guest machines – I’ve tried Microsoft Hyper-V, but for whatever reason it just lacks the performance and flexibility that I’ve found with VirtualBox.

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Instrument Making Course

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

I learned most about guitar making by doing the Instrument Making course at Tonsley TAFE. Unfortunately, TAFE have for some strange reason decided to discontinue that course (I thought it was very popular…go figure?!)

Anyway, Michael Snowden, who taught that course, has now set up his own business offering instruction on instrument making. Check out his website here: Adelaide Artisan Instrument Making. Guitar Making for everyone – Wood & Strings – Adelaide Artisan Instrument Making…

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Jigging, plating and sanding

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

So despite my lack of motivation, I did make some progress this week.

I thought I had finished making jigs, having completed acoustic number 4 entirely in my home workshop…apparently not.

Number 4 had a dovetail joint for the neck, for which I bought a template from Stew Mac and build my own device for using it. Nothing wrong with the jig or template, but I swear I’m not doing another dovetail joint, they are just too difficult!

So for this build, I’m doing straight mortise and tenon joint with bolt on neck.

But, I needed the template to cut the mortise and tenon.…

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Fridays are lutherie days!

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

Earlier this year I negotiated with my employer to work 4 days a week, allowing me one day, Fridays, to spend in the workshop making guitars. So far it’s working out OK. A lot of those Fridays haven’t fully been spent on lutherie, or I’ve had medical appointments or lunch catch-ups with friends. I could probably have been more diligent about reserving Fridays just for lutherie.

Never the less, I have managed to punch out two bodies and start on two necks in that time, acoustic dreadnoughts number 5 and 6. I’m using timber I picked up from David Linton of Australian Guitar Timbers back in September 2019 when I was on holidays on the Sunshine Coast.…

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The difference between lies and bullshit.

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt famously drew a distinction between lies and what he termed “bullshit”.

A lie is an untruth, but it is still tied to a fact. It is the corruption of the fact. Bullshit is speech with no basis in fact, in truth. Many of us think we live in an age of lies, when in fact we live in an age of bullshit.

Bullshit is like belief, its embrace affords no room for questioning.

Frankfurt’s notion of bullshit can help us better understand the nature of modern politics, advertising, news and even science (think climate change denial or anti-vaxxers).…

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SqLite Auto-increment fields in Entity Framework

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

By default, Scaffolding a table with an auto-increment field adds:

.ValueGeneratedNever();

To the field in the Model Builder. This will cause an automatic value NOT to be generated. This needs to be removed.

Also, we need to add:

        [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
        public int? TemplateId { get; set; }

To the item – and ensure it is a nullable int. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ef/core/modeling/generated-properties …

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Interface the virtual abstract

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

I’ve researched this several times now and keep forgetting the results. So, putting it here to record it for next time. What is the difference and usage for c# interfaces, virtual and abstract classes and methods? And where do you use them?

Interface

An interface specifies a contract.

  • Interfaces contain only declarations of the members in the class but cannot contain implementation details.
  • Interfaces do not have constructors
  • All methods in an interface MUST be implemented by the class
  • It only contains public access modifier because everything in the interface is public.
  • A child class can inherit from multiple interfaces (multiple inheritance)
  • [Note that properties in C# are in effect a method, so you can specify a property in an interface, but the property needs to be implemented by the derived class].
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